Whether the federal courts will indeed hear their cases remains to be seen, though the authors do point to case law that may...
When intifada and suicide bombings don't get the desired results, call an attorney.
Meier and Cellini, mysterious authors with cloaked identities and no clear credentials, offer a novel use for already overloaded federal judges: given that America is the new Roman Empire, they urge, dispossessed and otherwise ill-used Palestinians, "like the provincials in the time of ancient Rome, must come with petitions in hand, and file them in the Federal Courts of America." Those courts, they add, may not be able to do much to change either laws or foreign policy, nor lessen the flow of American money and arms into Israel, but they can at least interpret such statutes as the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 to punish American companies doing business with Israel–particularly Caterpillar, whose bulldozers, Meier and Cellini assert, are the instrument of choice for razing Palestinian houses so that Israeli ones can be built. The courts can further block the flow of some kinds of money and restrict entry into the country for Israelis who have engaged in acts of violence in the occupied territories, for, in the second case, the Immigration and Nationality Act "carefully defines 'terrorist activity' " to include "a violent attack upon an internationally protected person." Among the so-called terrorists to suffer from this provision, the authors hold, would be a substantial number of Israeli soldiers, including the leadership of the general staff. Meier and Cellini close the argument portion of their book–which, though largely ad captandum, is followed by a substantial, and useful, body of documents from world governmental and human-rights organizations–by importuning Palestinians to "sue often and everywhere."
Whether the federal courts will indeed hear their cases remains to be seen, though the authors do point to case law that may help such arguments along. As to damages for suicide bombings and bus-stop stabbings, well, that's another question.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-9746366-1-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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